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In recent years, there has been a growing movement to deny that Gypsies had anything to do with the introduction of the tarot into Europe. The idea has been increasingly ridculed since the start of the 20th century on basis that the cards were used for divination prior to the arrival of these migrating people into Europe. This claim is equally suspect on the grounds that there is no hard evidence to prove any other group or culture for that matter, were resposible for the introduction of the tarot into the Western conciousness. It is as if the tarot 'just arrived' from nowhere and manifested in Nothern Italy around seven hundred years ago according to most historians.

Comparison between the traditional Hindu artistic representation of Kali, the goddess of 'Death and Renewal' (left) with the imagery of the Death card in a traditional tarot deck, which also represents the same general concepts.

There has also been a drive to further popularise the notion of the Knights Templar having brought the tarot back from their invasions of the Holy Lands during the crusades. This theory has mainly found favour as part and parcel of the Knights Templars taking on a fashionable cultural cache — due to the work of fiction writers such as Dan Brown. Again, there is no hard historical evidence to suggest that the tarot was brought to Europe as some booty from the Islamic world. This also throws light on another flaw in the theory; that being the prohibition on graven images within Islam. It is almost impossible to conceive that the images of Major Arcarna would of been accepted, let alone tolerate with the strict theological confines of Muslim doctrine.

From my own research, and contrary to the currently accepted wisdom concerning the origin of the tarot, I still feel the case for Gypsies bringing the tarot to Europe still remains most the credible. The historical archeology of much of the tarot strongly suggests a possible Hindu origin brought into Europe via the Slavic world. One of the reasons for this backlash against the Gypsie origins of the tarot, is I believe, the historical confusion concerning different branches of the 'Gypsie' racial groups, and in particular, the confusing of the Roma Gypsies (the 'Romani' who spread into Western Europe in the 15th Century) and the Indo-European sub-group of Gypsies called The Dom.

The Dom people have an oral tradition and express their culture and history through music, poetry and dance. Recent studies of the Domari language suggest the group departed from the Indian subcontinent in the 6th century. The worldwide name for Roma Gypsies to identify themselves was term 'Rrom' and this may be the reason for assuming that there were no much earlier Gypsie migrations in Europe who called themselves “Dom”.

Several Dom tribes migrated across the Danube into Western Europe and were called Dom and much later became to be known as Rom, while the ones that remained in Persia and Turkey were still called Dom. These migrations took place several centuries before the accepted date of mass Romani migration into Europe around the 14th century. Hence the confusion and the mistaken belief that the tarot (as an esoteric canon) predates the great Gypsie migration. The contemporary historians who promote the fashionable Knight Templar theory are ignoring the previous migration of the Dom. Which to be fair, is understandable. They are similar ethnic Gypsie group and these are the ones who brought the early version of the tarot into Europe.

The iconography of the Major Arcarna of the tarot reveals the Hindi influence in some of the cards. The Chariot (Arjuna), the Wheel of Fortune (Shiva) and in particular, the Death card is far too closely connected in both style and allegory to Kali, the Hindu god of death and renewal — to be merely consider a historical accident. The Death card in the tarot is absolutely Kali in my opinion. The only historical link between India and Europe prior to the Middle Ages is the Dom peoples arriving in Hungary in the 6th Century.

Count de Gébelin, one of the more famous tarot historians pointed out that the Hungarian Gypsies name for the cards 'tar' is similar to the Hindustani 'taru' ('tar-ot'). Another famous proponent of the Gypsie theory was Jean Alexandre Vaillant — who himself lived for several years with the Gypsies in order to gain insight into their esoteric practices and rituals. A fascinating individual, Vaillant was among the first non Gypsies people to use the terms 'Romania' in the modern sense, after the term had been in circulation for some time in Wallachia and among its citizens. We also have to bear in mind when considering the historical legacy of the Gypsies and the tarot, that racial hatred of the Roma people in Europe plays a huge role in the dimissing of their cultural legacy. Gypsies were sold as slaves in the Slavic world as late as the 19th Century. Vaillant's theory on the origin of the tarot was also endorsed by the French writer Papus — who concurred that the tarot is a repository of ancient, profound knowledge by way of the Romany/Gypsies (i.e. 'Bohemians') who arrive in Europe from India.

“The Gypsies posses a Bible. This card game is called the Tarot and it is the Bible of Bibles. It is a marvelous book, as Count de Gébelin and especially Valliant have realised. Under the names of Tarot, Thora and Rota, this game has formed successively the basis of the synthetic teaching of ancient peoples. ...the absolute science of the occult.”

Even one of the most staunch critics of the Gypsies origins of the tarot, De l' Hoste Ranking had to admit that the cards must have been introduced into Europe by people's originally speaking an Indian dialect by way of the Slavic world. He noted that the imagery of the Pope card for instance, was Eastern Orthodox in dress style, as was the headdress of the Emperor card with the shape of the eagle on the shield being of Russian imperial origin. Then Ranking went on to assert (based on the historical ignorance of the time concerning the previous migration of the Dom branch of Gypsies) that the cards could not of been brought into Europe from India via the Slavic world due to the fact there was no (Roma) Gypsies community in Europe prior to 1417.

Prince Arjuna riding into battle (a Vedic metaphor for the battle between the ego and subconscious mind) is shown here in the classic Hindustani artistic portrayal within a decorated covered war chariot. On the right we see a very early Chariot tarot card. Representing victory and conquest in the form of a prince riding into battle under a covered chariot. Covered chariots were almost unknown in European warfare, yet were very common on Indian battle fields for thousands of years. This provides one more clue suggesting the origin of the imagery of the tarot and its introduction into Europe by Dom Gypsies migrating from east of the Indus valley in the 6th century.

Card games (but not for divination) were already established in Europe by this date. Ranking and subsequent historians were, I believe, dismissing the wrong branch of the Gypsie ethnic group in regards to the introduction of the tarot into Europe. Once we consider the now historically factual understanding of the 6th century migrations of the Dom from India and across the Danube, coupled with the remarkable similarities between the Hindu iconography and some of the cards of the Major Arcarna — we can be in no doubt today that the Gypsie-Indo-European origin of the Tarot as a form of esoteric science is the most plausible to date.

Within the cards of the tarot many of the analytical psychological motifs of Carl Jung’s concepts and understanding of the personality can be found, often with remarkable clarity and insight. His theories on the Self, Shadow, Extraversion, Introversion, Conscious, Unconscious, Centering, and Compensation This also merges well within the right and left poles as indications of masculine/active or feminine/passive energies via a cognitive exploration through the right/left hemispheres of the brain.

Jung's rediscovery of the Western alchemical tradition unearthed a previously lost canon of psychic personal self realisation which was practically identical to his theories concerning the process of Individuation as specific stages of psychic development leading to the 'rounding out' of ones personal life story. Jung put forth the idea that on one hand there is the natural process of growth which takes place in every living thing, and which occurs unconscious. This can be further augmented with consciously processed stages of inner development according to precise doctrines and practices. That being, the conscious mind monitors what is happening, and strives to manipulate the life-stream into a kind of heroic self adventure and exploration of the universal journey of the hero which resonates in all cultures through various of myth and legend.

I found it very useful integrating the language and framework of Jungian concepts to process the tarot system within the popular understanding of the nature of the unconscious mind. The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcarna present the reader with crucial stages of the journey of life. Through direct personal engagement with the mysteries revealed in each tarot card the development of the reader's personality moves ever closer to Individuation.

Individuation encompasses the whole of our journey through life and falls into two halves. The first half being the reader's relationship to the real world and the stabilisation of the ego. Following this, the process is reversed and thus begins the clash of the ego with the psyche. Our true Centre of consciousness. Like the natural state of the left and right brain (and all other expressions of duality within the cosmos) — these two phases oppose and complement each other as a symbiotic inter-dependence. They have a cohesive evolutionary interaction. Jung noted that first half of life is best understood as solar (left brained/masculine), and the second half of life becomes lunar (right brained/feminine) leading away from the legitimisation of the ego and on towards introspection and our relationship to the physical universe.

"In the morning it (the sun) rises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament.”

- C.J.Jung. Stages of Life: Collected Works, Vol. 8

Within the Major Arcarna we find The Wheel of Fortune (Shiva the destroyer of the ego?) unsurprisingly anchored at the mid-point — what has become known today as the mid-life crisis. Or 'mid-life opportunity' depending on your psyche development and how well one has stabilised their ego up to that point. This is the high-point of our earthly physical existence when one is then confronted with the inevitability of biological death. However, this realisation allows us to become who we are meant to be and if processed correctly — should be a period filled with creativity, energy and personal liberation — towards peace, acceptance and the emotional contentment which we are often deprived of during the first half of life where the ego reins over our personality.

“At the stroke of noon the descent begins. And the descent means the reversal of all the ideals and values that were cherished in the morning.”

C.J.Jung. Stages of Life: Collected Works, Vol. 8

A JUNGIAN EXPLORATION OF THE MAJOR ARCARNA

The following tables set forth the Major Arcarna according to Jung's comparision of the cards to that of the personal initiation stages of alchemy. Jung found the historical Western equalivent of his own psychology within medevil alchemey (from the arab 'the', and Greek 'khemia meaning 'the art of transmuting metals').

The alchemists had discovered their own esoteric solution to problems of uniting oposites. Jung was the first to make alchmey psychologically accessible to modern ideas of psychological development. The imagery similar to the alchemical dream images and unsurprisingly, by extention, these are also found within the tarot. Jung believed that alchemy was the compesatory shadow in the relationship with Christianity in modern man — this also explains the incorporation of Christian imagery within the symbols of the tarot.

The FoolA young man who can be compared to the newly born child. Innocent and still encapsulated within the folds of the unconscious.

The Magician He is the self, with the symbols of transformation before him.

The Papess (High Preistess)The power of the infant ego representing the female, and to the Jungian function relating to Intuition. Intuition tells you whence it comes and where it is going (possibilities).

The EmpressThe power of the infant ego again representing the female, and to the Jungian fuction relating to Feeling. Feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not (its value).

The EmperorThe power of the infant ego representing the Material, and to the Jungian function relating to Sensation. Sensation tells you that something exists (through the senses).

The Pope (Heirophant)The power of the infant ego representing the Spiritual, and to the Jungian function relating to Thought. Thinking tells you what it is (its definition).

The LoversThe first decisive choice in life and the rejection of our maternal and paternal security for a mate. This is the point when we become responsible for our actions and ultimately our own personal destiny.

The ChariotThe drive for personal success and conformity for the laws and conventions of society. The adoption of a social mask, or ego vehicle in order to achieve these social aims.

JusticeThe establishment of our physical maturity and the begining of the realisation that our personal story has thus far been the sacrifice of our unconcious or spiritual development for the sake of establishing our conscious persona. Now the time has come for the imbalance to be addressed or a stagnation of our psyche will take place.

The HermitNow begins the process of our own self-examinination. A more focussed and prudent path must be found.

The Wheel of FortuneWe now arrive at the midpoint in our journey. Our peak has passed and now we must accept the realisation that the journey towards the end of our personal story in this life has now begun.

Force (Fortitude)They rewards of self examination earlier on in our journey now come into play as our maturity disarms the primal forces of our unconcious.

The Hanged ManNow a reversal of priorities and personal values must take place. Sacrifice of the values we held in the first part of our journey is vital for our progress.

DeathTransformation of consciouness is unavoidable. The ego must now be discarded as the primary force of our identity. Its rejection leads to the maturity of our higher self.

TemperenceThe decent into the underworld has resulted in victory. Our conciouness and unconsciousness are in communion with one another. The previous imbalance between the two has at last been addressed.

The DevilBut even following the reconsiltion of our poles of consciouness — unexpected dangers can still arise. These are tests to see if our spiritual maturity can overcome our basic extincts.

The TowerThe surge of energy and creativity when the division between the concious and unconscious is removed by exterior influence.

The StarNow the light from within shines forth to illuminate our way during the remainder of our journey.

The MoonSymbolises the final great tribulation we will have to endure . The 'dark night of the soul'.

The SunWe now reconsiliate the duality of our psyche. A new day is dawning.

OBSERVING THE MIRROR OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS THROUGH THE MIRROR OF THE TAROT SPREAD

During the last decade I have come to see the tarot and the images contained on these mysterious cards to be perhaps the most useful device an individual can use to resolve any underlying issues that may be present within their lives. The archetypal symbolic language and imagery contained within the tarot deck remains a very useful device to allow us to focus on our personal goals and objectives in life — by creating a narative derived from personal intution and knowledge of the self. A narative which can bypass the ego and allow a dialog between the conscious and subconscious minds resulting in a more natural and flexible outlook to life and to the challenges our day-to-day existence often prersents us with.

Due to the fact that our education system has created a left/right brain imbalance, wereby the left hemisphere of the brain has been given jurisdiction over our entire cognitive functioning. This has resulted in an purposely engineered neurosis within modern humans. Think of a chariot with two wheels, and one wheel is larger than the other. The constant efforts by the charioteer needed to control the direction in which he is traveling creates on-going chaos and stress. The need to compensate for this imbalance results in the charioteer having to put all his effort into maintaining the control of his vehicle. Everything else must be sacrificed in order to do this.

The modern human brain is subject to much the the same delemia as the charioteer trying to control the direction of his unbalanced chariot — often we can't handle emotional and psychological issues within our lives as effectively as we should be able to because our minds are too busy trying to maintain the direction of our thoughts. The left brain being too dominant, disregards finding any support derived from within the deeper and more spiritual aspect of psychology, even though this is the purpose of our subconscious mind to begin with.

Focussing our minds on creativity is one way to restore the left/right brain balance. However, not all of us have a natural inclination towards drawing, creative writing and music. The application of the Tarot into ones life allows the same creative impulses to fire the dormant synapses in our right brain, and create new neural pathsways, in the same way this happens with painters and poets during the creative process. We less likely to seek help from others — especially 'experts' — when dealing with challenging issues in our lives, and we learn to resolve them using our own inititaves and intuitions by engaging with the art and symbolism of the tarot. We attain psychological autonomy.

This is precisely the reason why our education systems made us dependent upon the left analytical side of our brains over the right hemisphere — the intuitive and creative side — to make us highly dependent upon exterior controls and influences, as well as needing constant guidance from authority figures. We are forever looking for instructions and counciling on what's best for us as individual from everything and everyone except ourselves. This left-dominated brain state most of us are in prevents us from being in control of our own lives. We are in a state of imposed internal psychological unease, and we generally have no faith in ourselves to resolve the chaos — because thanks to our formal education (indoctrination) we are unable to do this.

We are too busy trying to maintain the course we are following in life — with one wheel (left brain) larger than the other (right brain) that we have to constantly maintain emotional, intellectual, psychological and spiritual control — when these things should come as naturally to us as walking, seeing and breathing all do at the same time. Our phyisology has no problem with multi-tasking — yet our minds are in perpetual delicate chaos with one mental faculty constantly being discarded for another. Except that is, for when we are sleeping and our dreams then try to help compensate for the chaos of our waking lives. But how many of us pay attention to what they are telling us?

The purpose of this article is to teach the reader how to use the tarot to perhaps correct this imbalance — allowing us to make personal decisions in our lives based equally on insight, intuition and dreams — working in tandem with the logic and skepticism of the left sides of our brain. We need both to in order to achieve our objectives in life and attain a peaceful coexistence both with ourselves and the world around us within this five sense reality.

Modern humans are increasingly confused, neurotic, unable to make intuitive decisions, as well as being prone to often unnessessary emotional turmoil. Yet we think we cannot regain this control within ourselves. Even though during our dream states, the allegory and metaphors streaming from our subconscious are constantly trying to help us. As soon as we awaken and enter into the 'real world' — the chaos and confusion begins again. Using the Tarot , will allow you to bring this 'inner vision' of dream states into our daily lives. Creating an on-going and incredibly powerful dialog between our underlying psychology and five sense reality existence.

Our creative intentions have likewise been muffled by the bullying and internal criticism of our left brains. We have been made into our the worse judges of the actions we take in our own lives. This new tarot reading method I have developed — over the last five years — has worked remarkably well for me personally - a valuable tool of personal consciousness liberation into their own lives.

WHY THE TAROT?

The tarot derives its power from the same inner, and outer world as the inner landscape that dreams, intuition, simulacra, fairytales, allegory, myth and spiritual forms of art also emerge from. For the simple reason that the narrative which reveals itself before the card reader is to be perfectly frank, the truth as we need to confront it. We are not presented with a random display of graphics on pieces of cardboard — we are given the very keys to the dynamics of the cosmos, and by extension, the dynamics of our own lives. These are unopposed poles of cognitive function from which we cannot bring into harmony until we have dealt with any outstanding conflicts which remain unresolved between the two. This is the cause of the emotional suffering in most human beings today in the West.

The effect of viewing the imagery and symbols of the tarot cards presents us with the noetic truths which we need to be confronted with. A gentle shock (but sometimes it can aslo be a loud explosion) from within, to force you to deal with something in your life which remains unresolved. Even if initally viewing the cards may not directly be telling us something profoundly meaningful to us at first sight — they will in time. Just like when we keep a dream journal — it is over time that the hidden story and its often staggering precognitive insights become manifest in daily reality of our waking world. Same thing with the fairytales read to us as children — these stories remain with us all our lives. Because they are our 'real stories' — the tarot spread is your real story too — but not directly composed within this world. It comes from a far more profound and direct place — from within our very souls.

Tarot cards, dreams and fairytales are road maps to the personal and collective unconscious of the human experience. They allow us to 'see' more clearly because we are looking at the world and our lives from a different angle. This sense of inner vision — the participation mystique — is just as important as the eyes on our heads streaming electrical signals to the back our our brains through our optic nerves as we look at the world with live and work within.

By using the images of the tarot we are seeing without prejudice.

Our living world, is directly interfaced with the world of our dreams, symbols, archetypes and metaphor. The tarot is the most personally effective way to fuse the poles of our conscious and unconscious lives into a roadmap towards our true destiny. Herein, lies the beauty of the tarot. The personal interpretation of the cards applied to the dynamics of our self realisation will help guide us to what Carl Jung, the Swiss analytical psychologist termed Individuation — the process of transforming a person's psyche by merging the personal and collective unconscious into the conscious world. Achieving physical wellbeing (overcoming addictions) and psychological health — to become balanced, mature and ultimately self-responsible. Individuation has been shown to promote a more mature sense of freedom and justice. Allowing us to gain a better understanding concerning the workings of human nature and the world in which we live. In other words, all the aspect presented to us in the images of the tarot, and in particular, the cards of Major Arcarna of the tarot.

INSIDE YOUR OWN MYTHOLOGY

When we consider, contemplate and engage with the imagery of the tarot we are forced to confront the basic core truths about ourselves as people and our place in the world. Often this can be brutally and startlingly revealed to us as fears, external and internal predicaments, longings and desires. The spread of cards can reach deep into the core of our archetypal personalities. From my own research into the tarot and its effects upon the reader, I have come to the conclusion that this is because the tarot is the continuation of the relationship we developed with the fairytales and mythologies we were exposed to as children.

The child within all of us is still there and this inner child never went away — rather, it became deeply buried each time our personality added a new layer on top of the previous layers of social masks as we navigated our way though life. The tarot allows to recall and reconnect with the pre-school version of ourselves which had a completely different consciousness before entering into the education system — only to be encapsulated with layers of ego and socially modified personas. The impact fairytales had upon us as children, and then later the impact the tarot can have upon us in adulthood, follow us throughout our lives. They resonate through experience and ordeals. We may not be consciously aware of this — but they are the insights towards basic truths about our own existence. We just ceased to view the morality of myth and legend, as our left-brained analytical education system and culture sees no value in this aspect of our consciousness.

OUR SHADOW IS REAL

A major problem I have with with New Age movement is the inability many of the well-intentioned folks within the culture wanting to deal with the negative aspects of the human condition. Prefering instead to shut them out in a maelstrom of ultimately destructive platitudes that “all is love” and we should seek to ascend to becoming beings of radiant light. This is infantile escapism at its worst, and ultimately leads to an eventual nervous breakdown of anyone who follows such a lifestyle.

There is a dark side in all of us. Like the psychopath within society it is there to be recognised and understood and not to be escaped from. We as individuals did not manifest into this five-sense reality to try and escape from it — we came here to master this reality and make it work for the benefit of ourselves and for the evolution of our species as a whole. As in every other aspect of the cosmos, we are all an expression of the duality which creates the evolutionary flux: positive/negative, male/female, light/dark.

None of us have ever been 'God's perfectly little angels'. However, children unlike most adults, accept their lack of moral perfection. This is because that aspect of their personality has not been educated or religiously indoctrinated out of them. Children learn to work on their shadow by listening to fairytales being read to them by adults who have lost their own ability to incorporate the underlying contextual truism contained within the stories. The tarot is the ideal mechanism to restore this back to us as adults.

In his 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment, Austrian-born American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim demonstrated that fairytales are like mirrors to the darker aspects of our childhoods. We as adults tend to think that children are all pure and innocent when nothing could be further from the truth. Childhood is filled with fears and aggression. Bettelheim explained how the fairytale is a vital tool for children to cope with the unresolved darker aspects of childhood. For example; in the original version of Jack and the Beanstalk — the story can be stripped down to the basic premise of a 'hero' clansdestingly hiding in a man's house, while playing on his wife's sympathies in order to rob and finally murder the owner. Now let's reexamine all children's fairytales in this light of this darker understanding. They all have this underlying acceptance of the darker aspect of the human conditon.

As I myself have pointed out in my own book Defeated Demons: Freedom from Consciousness Parasites in Psychopathic Society, the underlying metaphor of the most children's fairytales is to warn us of psychopaths. Using the imagery and meanings of certain tarot cards we can reincorporate these warning into our adult lives with cards such as The Devil, The Queen of Swords, The Moon, the Six of Coins and The Page (or Knave) of Cups. The tarot allows us to carry forth this archetypal acknowledgement of the dark sides of the collective and personal psyche. Navigating the unconsciousness dimensions of the personality — in order to find a way through them.

INTO THE LABYRINTH OF THE MIND TO BRING FORTH THE TRUISM OF THE SELF INTO THE MATERIAL WORLD

Tarot imagery used in this context can be best understood as the on-going study of the previously mysterious dynamics of our personality — both positive and negative — in order to resolve our relationship with the world around us by fully understanding how it effects both our conscious and subconscious minds. A cipher of the not yet understood dreams of the self through compensatory values and archetypes which are revealed to us in the spread of cards. These abstract, unconscious archetypes buried deep within us can be brought to the surface — as the language of the tarot mirrors landscape of our personal understanding. Telling us what we don't yet know about ourselves — and that which we have forgotten as a result of fulfilling our roles as responsible adults within modern, left-brain orientated society.

The left-brain domination encourages logic as a means to an end. While logic can be very useful for solving technical issues. When applied to personal or social engineering it can be disastrous, even tyrannical and monstrous. Within indigenous societies, the unsuppressed wisdom of the right side of the brain compensates for this. This wisdom is the language of survival — it is primal and animalistic in nature. The Anima or the soul of this primal wisdom.

Although the tarot as it has developed over the centuries now contains Christian imagery — generally this is an another adaptation of earlier pagan folklore and traditions. For example, The Papess can equally be viewed as Egyptian goddess Isis. The repression of the sacred feminine in Western society remains strong within the tarot and this may explain why use of the tarot (mostly for divination) is more popular with women today than men.

What has been codified into dogma by religion and secular law becomes far more ephemeral within the tarot. There is tremendous personal liberation and freedom from autocratic structures when using the tarot, and this goes along why as to why ignorant and often hysterical censorship/ridicle — from the Reformation — seek to degrade and admonish proponents of the tarot. Again, this is a reaction to the natural and individualistic instinctive wisdom unleashed by the tarot, when it is confronted by the exclusive dependence on logical, left-brained intelligence.

THE UNFOLDING NARATIVE

We have been also been educated to depend exclusively on using our egos to connect with exterior belief packages and then we have been trained to fight to maintain these beliefs in an often charged emotional manner. Sometimes laying down our lives for these codified dogmas. Religion, atheism, nationality, gender, social status and the other handed-down identities and insignias of the ego-based personality. However, most people do not explore any of the iconography and archetypes which may led them to the truth of their inner subconscious experiences. But they will die for a flag, a geographic entity, or a holy book.

The function of all myth is to use the narrative to look for the personal meanings. As Joseph Campbell once stated. “Myth is just another person's religion.” Using the tarot — more than any other means of self exploration, with the exception of the creative process — we can live within our own myth and come to rejoice and revel in the experience of our own lives. That being, taking heed and living by the myth which is revealed by the tarot spread. This allows us to balance our outer world, with our inner world of dreams feelings and inclinations. Tarot uses the framework of navigating through the dynamics of the left-right brain interrelationship to allow the reader to become the narrator of their own myth, in order to move towards their own Individuation.

The ancient Greeks had two words for “word” — Mythos (a sense of meaning) and Logos (rational and logical understanding). With the exception of the Roma Gypsies culture of modern Europe (which will be revealed later as being centre to the impact of the tarot upon the Western consciousness), the concept of the personal creation myth within Western culture is always expressed as descending from above. “Let their be light” and so on.

When we use the tarot and incorporate it into our lives, we transfer over to something more akin to the creation myth of Native Americans which 'emerges from within'. The self, through the progression of the cards as they are presented, is revealed slowly like the petals of an unfolding flower — as the cards are laid out in the spread before us.